 This is Kristen Lays at Heritage Preservation in Washington, D.C. And I want to welcome you to the first class in our online course, Caring for Photographs. This is the fifth course in our Caring for Yesterday's Treasures Today series that's been made possible by Elora Bush 21st Century Librarian Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And we're so grateful for this grant funding which allows us to offer these to you at no charge. And we know that so many of you have participated and had a chance to participate because of that. As Mike mentioned, just keep saying hello in the chat box if you're just coming into the room. And it's great to see everyone here today. We've had tremendous interest in today's course and we've got over 200 people joining us. And I just wanted to go over some logistics about our courses because this is our first class today. So this is our first webinar about the physical and the chemical properties of photographs. And we'll have another webinar this Thursday at 1 o'clock, but only one next week on May 16, Thursday. And I just want to alert you to the fact that we've had to move this back to start at 3 p.m. Eastern. And then our final two webinars will be on May 21st and May 23rd, back again at 1 o'clock. So I hope you can join us for that. I also want to just remind you that there is a home page for this course. You'll be able to see this PowerPoint slides as a handout that will be posted after our presentation today. And we're doing that because Debbie is so great with her PowerPoints and making them engaging and image heavy. She really wants that element of surprise. She wants you to be engaged in the material and see it for the first time today. So she asked that just be patient and we'll post those handouts immediately after the presentation. But also on the home page you'll find links to our homework assignment, to any resources mentioned in today's class, and other additional information. And Debbie has really provided an excellent bibliography of resources. So a lot of them are linked and we encourage you to look there for additional information. Four of those publications, actually I'm sorry, five of those publications have been published by Getty. And they were generous enough to offer a 30% discount off those hard copy publications. This information on this slide about how to use the discount has been sent by email. And we will do that again in our follow-up email today, reiterate that so you'll have that information. They didn't really set a deadline for how long this discount will be good, but I think if you can use it within the next few months they'd appreciate that. So I want to alert you to that again. And if you're working towards a certificate of completion in this course like our other courses, I want to remind you of those requirements. So hopefully you've registered. The registration's now closed, but be in touch if you did not fill out a form on our website that looks like this because that means we don't know who you are. So we ask that you be in touch with us. You should also watch each webinar. If you can't make it live, we'll be getting emails with the recording and complete all five homework assignments. And again, like our other courses, we won't do individual feedback, but Debbie will reference your responses to homework in her upcoming classes. And although you are not required to work towards a certificate, it's completely optional. You will want to make sure you get all the homework assignments complete by Thursday, May 30th. That's our deadline for this course. And you will also be eligible if you earn a certificate to get a digital credential. And this is what this one looks like, and we will be sending that notification by email as well to everyone who earns a certificate through the Credly website. That Learning Times, who is one of our partners on this and our producer on this, is made available to us, so we thank them for that. And finally, this class is eligible for archival credits from the Academy of Certified Archivists. So if you are a Certified Archivist, go to their website for more information about the number of credits, and we're very grateful that they offered this as well to you. If you haven't already, we invite you to join the Connecting to Collections online community. That was a website you went through today, and it's a great place to continue to network with your colleagues that you might have met on this course or to ask additional questions that came up during the class today. And we have over 3,000 members at this point, so it's a really wonderful resource that we're working to improve all the time, and we thank everyone for their participation in it. So again, if you have any questions about course logistics or registration, please feel free to contact us at info at heritagepreservation.org and recall us. And before we keep going, I would like to actually ask the audience a few questions. This will help us understand who has joined us today. So we're going to do a couple of polls to start us off. And the first is just to let us know what type of institution do you work with or are you currently working with an institution? And we know so many of you have multiple roles. For example, a historical society may have archives or may have a library or historic sites. So we recognize that, but just see if there is one primary function you can identify. That is good enough for this poll. And it looks like a great mix of folks today. That's really wonderful. Great. Okay. So archivists have a lead, but if you combine all the types of museums and all the types of libraries, it's a nice even split. So that's really great. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and just close this and drag it off. But our next question had to do with who is caring for photographs at your institution. And there may be multiple folks. So feel free to check as many boxes as applicable in your circumstance. And if you're not working at an institution, if it's just you and your own personal collection, then NA is fine to check as well. Great. Okay. Well, thank you again. Yeah, I see a lot of variety in this question. And I think this is going to be really helpful to you, this course, because we know so many of you wear many hats and want to do the right thing for your collections, but just need some additional information and resources. And this is the whole purpose behind connecting to collections. And we're so pleased to welcome you. Great. I'm just going to close this poll. And I'd love to tell you now about our course instructor. Deborah Hesnoris is our instructor for this entire course. And she is the chair of the art conservation department at the University of Delaware and a professor of photograph conservation. She graduated in Magna Cum Laude with an interdisciplinary BA in chemistry, art history, and studio art, and got an MS in conservation from the University of Delaware. And since 1985, she has authored more than 30 articles and book chapters on the care and treatment of photographic materials. She's taught more than 100 workshops and seminars for conservators and allied professionals around the world, as well as around the United States, and consults widely. She's active in many preservation groups, including Heritage Preservation. And in addition to being publicly recognized as a leader in the conservation community, she's won many awards. She's also a very skilled fundraiser and has secured nearly $13 million in external grants for the art conservation department at the University of Delaware. And so she'll reference that throughout her presentations, but especially in the very last webinar, she's going to talk more about fundraising. And you're very lucky to have her expertise in this. I also wanted to note that Debbie's got one of her graduate students, Greta Glazer, joining us in the online chat. And Greta will help answer questions as well. I'm going to go ahead now and drag away the hello box that you've been typing in. And we're going to move it over to moderated chat. So this is what Mike was referencing. You will see your question once or your comment once. And if it's published to the group, you'll see it again as it's published. Any kind of technical issue you're having, Jenny, Irina in our office, or Mike will help you behind the scenes. So feel free to continue to say hello or to ask any questions in the Q&A box. And with that, I am going to close this screen and bring up Debbie's presentation and allow her to begin. So welcome, Debbie. Hi. Hopefully everyone can hear me. It looks like I'm online. I am absolutely delighted to be here. I look forward to working with all of you during the next five sessions that will focus on the preservation of photographic print and negative materials. I wanted to especially thank the Institutor Museum and Library Services for their support of this initiative, which is so important. This kind of training, I'm sure many of you have been involved in a whole series of these webinars that have been offered over the last few months. And it's so important. It's so vital. And I'm just very excited to be a part of it. Special thanks also to Learning Times for providing the technical assistance and, of course, to Heritage Preservation, which has played such a pivotal role in collections, care, education and training throughout the nation. And what's most exciting also about this particular series of seminars is the international participation. And certainly I look forward to the questions and trying to address them in the best possible way over the course of these five sessions. I'm going to treat this as a class in that I certainly have prepared PowerPoints for all the sessions, but I'm not going to worry so much about racing through them. I'm going to try and answer some of your questions. We have five sessions, hour and a half each, to address the broad range of topics, the focus on the preservation of photographic print and negative material. So I'll try and keep moving forward, certainly pausing for questions where we can, but also I won't worry so much about addressing every single image today. We can pick this up certainly on Thursday when we meet again. So you can probably tell from my title that I love the Beatles and what I've decided to do in this session, in all these sessions, actually is to start with one song, in this case here, Larry, and everywhere. And where I can, some of the great images that exist, photographic images of the Beatles from different periods of time. This by Harry Benson, a Silver Gelatin developing out photograph, we'll talk more about this process on Thursday. I'll mention it briefly today, but it's important when you see this black and white photograph of Paul which is so gorgeous, to recognize as a Silver Gelatin photograph, the final image material, the material that makes these areas black. Let me try the pointer here. There we go. So the blackness that you see here is silver metal and that's why it's called a Silver Gelatin photograph. And Gelatin simply refers to the fact that the binder in this photograph is Gelatin. I'll talk much more about this. Today. And of course, we will be speaking about photograph conservation around the world and some of my final lectures will deal a little bit more with the global issues, the preservation challenges that I know you all face in preserving these wonderful materials and also, as Kristen mentioned, we'll talk a little bit about outreach and advocacy and fundraising as well. I'm excited about the registrants. Again, such a broad international focus which you see here and many of the continents represented as well. The needs and photographic collections are great and very similar really from around the world. Kristen mentioned that I chair the Art Conservation Department at the University of Delaware and just to say that this is comprised of an undergraduate program, a master's level program that's jointly sponsored with Winitour Museum and a doctoral program in preservation studies. And here, I would simply direct you to our website where you can find lots of information about all three of our programs, particularly our master's level program, which is the three-year program that's designed to train professional conservators. And in this program, our students, we take ten students a year, can specialize in a variety of different topics including photographic materials. The reason I wanted to mention this especially is that two of my current graduate students, both pursuing photograph conservation, are assisting with this webinar. In fact, they've been an enormous help in developing the content and now will be online to try and address some of your questions so that we can keep moving forward. And I can take on some of the bigger questions, but Heather Brown, who you see here is a second-year fellow in our master's level program. And Greta Glazer, who I will show you next, who you see here who's in her third year and at the Library of Congress as part of her third-year fellowship will be online. Today, Greta's online and on Thursday, Heather will be online. So we'll let you know who's online and who's answering these questions. And I'm most grateful to both Greta and Heather for their help and their expertise and their enthusiasm for this field. Greta's been involved in a very interesting project, a bit of which you see here, which was looking at the photographs by Gertrude Kasebier, which are in the University of Delaware collection. Gertrude Kasebier was a photo secessionist photographer who worked in the early 1900s and worked with a variety of different photographic processes from platinum to gum biker mate to some silver gelatin, but primarily the platinum and gum biker mate process. And Greta, as a second-year fellow, was involved in examining this very large collection of Gertrude Kasebier's works here at the University of Delaware, which are now on exhibit. A beautiful exhibition for those of you who are more local to Newark, Delaware. Please think about coming by to see this show. But Greta was involved in the analysis and study of these many materials to differentiate platinum from gum biker mate and some of the other processes that appear in the collection. So she will be online today to answer some of the questions that you have. And again, I'm grateful to both Greta and Heather for their help. Also, I want to be sure as we sort of go through this course that I'm constantly referring to resources, books, publications, websites. A lot of this is online, but I'll try and direct you to those that will be helpful for certain parts of the discussions. And here are two by a good friend and colleague of mine, Bertrand Lavadrine, who is a scientist in Paris and has written eloquently, really, on a variety of issues associated with photographic conservation. Two of his more popular books are featured here. Both are available from the Getty. And I particularly recommend Photographs of the Past. For those of you who are signing in from other parts of the world, this book has been translated, I believe, in both Spanish and French. But it's a wonderful introduction to the variety of photographic materials that you're likely to encounter in your collection. And very user-friendly, lots and lots of images, charts, and graphs that I think you will find very helpful. Similarly, the other book that you see here, Preventive Conservation of Photographic Collections, also by Bertrand Lavadrine, is a more detailed assessment of issues surrounding collections care, proper environmental conditions, emergency preparedness, the degradation of siloes nitrate and siloes acetate film, many, many topics that will be most useful to you. So if you can purchase these, I think you'll find them to be a very good addition to your personal library. Two other books. One looking at Photographs by Gordon Baldwin at the Getty. Gordon was a curator at the Getty Museum for many, many years. And this book is just a very nice book for the public that sort of speaks to, as it says here, guide to technical terms and addresses all the different processes that you're likely to encounter in a photographic collection, beginning with the daguerreotype in 1839 until present day. And this book is just a nice reference for understanding basic information on what is an albumen print, whether it's a silver gelatin print, whether it's a platinum print, et cetera. And finally, Issues in Conservation of Photographs was written by my colleague and myself where we actually edited it. We didn't write it. Jay Gutierrez and I worked on this. And this is just a compilation of important articles that have been written about the field, particularly historical articles that deal with conservation treatment, preventive conservation, the beginning of the field of photographic conservation, et cetera. So you might find this of use and interest in terms of philosophy and ethics and the evolution of the field of photograph conservation. But it is not as specific on issues relating to preventive conservation or collections care. Finally, I will also, over the course of these five sessions, direct you to various websites. And this is one, the Regional Alliance for Preservation. This is sort of a collaboration or a combination of the many regional conservation centers across the nation who work with a variety and the preservation of variety materials, and they've assembled all their resources into this one particular site where you can find a list of publications and workshops that they're offering in preservation of photographic materials. You can search on photographs. You can search on emergency response. And it will pull up lots of important publications that they have produced through their own centers that you may find useful. And I'll refer to these as we go, but this is a general website that you may not be familiar with and I urge you to go online, check it out, particularly the tab publications and resources where I think you'll find some interesting links and some very helpful information. Okay, so just to sort of start moving through with these photographic materials, they are a great treasure. They are enormously valuable to all of us, and they are also vulnerable to deterioration and require our input and our work. And it's important to always sort of step back for a minute when you're talking about photographic materials and why they're important to really think about what is it about these materials that we're trying to preserve? Because if we can articulate why, why this work is so important, where a better position to raise funds to develop concrete collection care plans to always be thinking about the big picture. And, of course, we know that the photographic materials in our collection enhance scholarship and knowledge, inspire discourse in all different ways, engage public audiences, and this, of course, is vitally important, and we'll be talking about this toward the end of the sessions. What can we do collectively to engage the public in our work? They document history, people connect to them. This is an example of an early color photograph from 1959, as you can see. We'll talk more later about the stability of this material that you can see in this particular photograph, that the borders are yellowed and the image is somewhat faded. This is because color photography is comprised of organic dyes, and these dyes fade in the dark and they fade in the light. And here you see a hand-colored daguerreotype. I'm going to be talking about the daguerreotype process very soon, and this is a very early photographic process introduced in 1839 in France. And as fantastic as these early photographic processes were, many people struggled with the fact that they were monochromatic, and therefore you will see wonderful early images that are hand-colored, as you see with this photograph here. And, of course, perhaps most importantly in today's world, these collections have the capacity to connect us globally, as you can see really through this webinar, and the many people who have signed up from around the world. And they celebrate greatness from portraits, as you see here. So there's many reasons, and it's important for you to sort of sit back and think about your collection and think about the scope of photographic materials that you're responsible for, why they're important, and what you need to do to ensure their long-term preservation. Many of you contributed images early on when you were signing up for this webinar months ago now from your collections, and so I've just gathered a few representative samples here to sort of illustrate further the fact that these materials certainly are endangered, as you see with the image of the young boy on your left. This is an early black-and-white silver gelatin photograph, similar to the photograph that we saw earlier of Paul McCartney, but this one is certainly earlier in time period, but it also has faded more significantly. So this image was likely more black and white in color. It's become browner in tone, and it certainly has faded more extensively around the outer edges. It's mounted onto a secondary support, and you can almost see that it looks like it's beginning to lift. It almost looks like it's been exposed to water damage of some kind. This fading of the silver image is a common problem that we'll be talking about quite a bit, and the need for all of you to think about what you can do to mitigate against this damage by controlling the environment. A lot of the fading of the silver image is most likely caused by exposure to fluctuating environmental conditions, high relative humidity conditions, for example. On the right side of the slide, you see an example of something that's much more contemporary. This color photograph, chromogenic color photograph, but this photograph has also faded and discolored. And in this case, the final image is comprised of organic dyes, cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes. And these dyes have faded at different rates. The photograph appears yellowed and perhaps a little blue or cyan and color as the magenta dye may have faded more seriously. I hope that this little pointer is not going to get in your way, but I'm going to keep it on my screen so I can use it. We just received this image, actually, I think this morning, and I decided to put it into our presentation, because this is a detail of a photograph you can see provided by Marcia. And what's interesting is this almost looks like a drawing, but in fact, this most likely is photographic. It's what we call a crayon portrait or charcoal enlargement. And at the turn of the century, many photographers experimented with taking an image and enlarging it onto paper, which may be mounted then onto canvas and stretched on a strainer. And this very faint image was then heavily embellished with charcoal or crayon or sometimes even oil paint. Sometimes these materials were varnished and looked very much like paintings. Sometimes, as you see here, they look more like a drawing. They do tend to look photographic when you look at the eyes and some of the other features, but they are heavily embellished. And this, too, is a photograph of some sort. We're going to talk also over the course of the next five sessions about photographic negative materials. Session three will deal with this in more detail. This is a glass plate negative in relatively good condition, actually, from one of the collections that has signed into the webinar. And in this case, you can see the image material, which is black and white here. But also, you notice that when you look at the outer edges, that this glass plate negative has also begun to fade and discolor in much the same way that the photographic portrait of the young boy has faded as well. This is deterioration of the silver image caused by exposure to poor environmental conditions. This is yet another challenge that many of us face. Cellulose nitrate film introduced in 1889, in which case we have not only degradation of the silver image, but deterioration of that cellulose nitrate support as well. And in 1929, we began to see the introduction of cellulose acetate film, a clear, transparent film that replaced cellulose nitrate film. And while it did not deteriorate in the same way, you can see here that one of the major challenges with these film-based materials, which really dominate collections, you're likely to have these materials if you have film posts, post 1935. In this case, the cellulose acetate film has shrunk quite significantly. The gelatin binder has not. And you get this characteristic channeling, which you see here throughout the film. So this is cellulose acetate degradation. Again, just a sample that's provided by one of the participants in the webinar. I like to do that. Please continue to send in images where you can. Maybe it makes it a bit more personal. But it shows you the range of the kinds of problems that you're encountering in your collections that are very typical of the kinds of problems that we certainly see around the world. So before I start with early direct positive processes, let me turn this over to Kristen just to see if we have any general questions that she thinks I might be able to answer at this point in time. Thank you, Debbie. Actually, we had a few, and they may be questions that you'll be answering or talking about further in another webinar. So if so, just tell us. But Robert Riles in South Carolina wondered in a mixed archive collection, is it preferable to separate the different processes? So black and white color, negative materials from paper-based manuscript collections. Because it seems like the preservation and conservation needs of photographs and those other paper-based materials are very different. For example, they might need old storage or other long-term storage. And of course, I think he's asking, because in an archive collection, they like to group things by subject. Do you want to handle that question now? Sure. Sure, let me handle it now. And it's something that we'll talk about really throughout the next courses, the next couple of lectures. Ideally, there are certain processes that should be separated out, and yet you do have to be cognizant and aware of how your collection is being used. I would say that it is very important to separate out negative materials from print materials. We just saw very quickly, as I went through some of the images that were shared with us from some of the participants, the challenges associated with cellist nitrate and cellist acetate film. And cellist nitrate film, as it deteriorates, it gives off nitric acid, which can affect joining materials as well. And so it is important to separate out cellist nitrate and cellist acetate film. At the same time, glass plate negatives, because of their weight and fragility, should be separated and stored in acid-free boxes. I'll talk about how to store these materials, but I would say sort of bottom line, separate out negatives from prints, separate out film-based collections from glass plate collections. And that's simply because of the different degradation problems associated with these materials. If the film-based materials can be put into cold storage, then it's not necessary to separate out nitrate-permacitate film. Those can all go into cold storage. If not, it may be important to separate out cellist nitrate film for health and safety reasons as well. And in terms of color and black and white, which looks like Robert has also asked about, again, as we get into this in much more detail, and I'm really excited that this is a five-part series and I don't need to try and do all this in one hour and a half. But as we get into this in a bit more detail, you'll certainly learn that one of the challenges with color materials is these organic dyes fade in the dark and they fade in the light. And the only way to mitigate against that deterioration is cold storage. So if it's possible to establish a cold storage vault or freezer or frost-free refrigerator of some sort, that's where color materials should be housed. For that reason, it's valuable to separate them out. If cold storage is not an option, then it's not mandatory that color materials be separated from other silver-based processes such as the albumin or silver gelatin print. So some of this is common sense. Some of this is based on format. Some of this is based on the support in which you find these materials. But there are some guidelines, and I hope that that was helpful to some extent. I think that's great, Debbie. I guess also there's a question from Kathy, and she had a question about copper plate negatives. So they're actually the metal plates themselves with a print or negative on them. And Greta gave her a good answer that you just need to keep them in a dry, stable environment. But I guess maybe as we're just starting off today you could answer this question, but also maybe talk a little bit about what your course is going to include, because we, for example, won't be getting into audio-visual materials, but we will have a course on that next fall, and you won't be getting into digital photography. So maybe in answering Kathy's question you can mention that as well, and that's our last question for now. Okay, great. Yeah, Kristen's exactly right in this particular course. So we're going to focus on photographic materials, prints and negatives. I won't be discussing, I might make some reference to digital materials, but not an extensive reference, and we won't be addressing audio-visual materials. But we'll try to address everything else, and because of this chat format, certainly I welcome questions. I'm sort of reserving the last webinar to address fundraising and advocacy a bit, but also to try and drill down to some of the questions that you all have and some of the challenges that you're facing in your collections. This issue of copper plates is an interesting one. The daguerreotype, which I'm going to talk about in a moment, is one of the earliest photographic processes, and it actually is on a silver-plated copper support. But I wonder if, in fact, Kathy may also have a collection, what often looks like copper plates are engravings that are used for printing processes. So it's an engraved image on a copper plate, which was used for printing. And I'm not going to be talking about that. That's more sort of photomechanical, but many historical societies, libraries, archives have large collections of these materials, and Greta is absolutely right about the need to ensure that the environment is stable, and that's usually the key. Honestly, if we only had three minutes for this seminar, which, thank goodness, is not the case, we would need to focus entirely on environmental control because that's really what drives preservation, and you need to do as much as you can in your collections to try and limit exposure to high-relative humidity conditions or fluctuating environmental conditions. I'm sorry about that train. It's going to be coming through here once in a while, and there was nothing I could do about that, but hopefully you all can hear me. So anyway, Kristen, can I keep on going? Yes, please do. Okay. But I'll keep stopping for questions as I need to and trying to monitor the questions, and again, I'm grateful to Greta for answering these as we go through. When we talk about photographic collections, we sometimes divide them into different categories, and one is the early direct positive process, which you see an example of an amber type here. The amber type process was introduced in the early 1850s. It's a photograph on glass, a silver image, a collodion binder. Collodion is a form of cellulose nitrate, and amber types, like tin types, which were also introduced in the 1850s, were typically varnished, and many amber types are in these decorative cases that you see here. The amber type, the daguerreotype, and the tin type are all referred to as direct positive processes because they are one of a kind. In the case of this amber type, this beautiful portrait, actually that's in very, very good condition, which you see here. The photographer took this piece of glass, coated it with a collodion, immersed it in a solution of silver nitrate to form light-sensitive silver halide in that collodion binder layer, allowed it to... not allowed it to dry, but sort of held it up in the air for just a brief period of time, and then placed that glass plate in the camera and exposed it to light. In that way, it's a direct positive process. There is no negative, and these early photographic processes that are often in these decorative cases were made in a variety of different ways, but they're all one of a kind, and for this reason, they are incredibly valuable and often very fragile. One of the more popular direct positive processes that you may have in your collections is the daguerreotype, introduced in 1839, popular in the United States until 1865. Some of these dates that you'll see in my lecture are dates of popularity, so that you may in fact find daguerreotypes after 1865, but they tended to dominate the market in the United States, at least, during this time period. I realize that you have signed in from different parts of the world and recognize that these are dates of popularity in the United States, so they do vary a bit around the world, but you won't find daguerreotypes prior to 1839 when it was introduced to the world in France by daguerre. The daguerreotype process is on a silver-plated copper support, and the final image material, as you see in my slide, is a gold-mercury silver amalgam. So these materials are relatively fragile and prone to deterioration, prone to corrosion, and are often protected in these decorative cases that I referenced earlier. They may also be hand-colored. You can see in this beautiful portrait that her cheeks are hand-colored with a red pigment, and this was to make these images appear a bit more lifelike. As gorgeous as these are, as amazing as these images were, and it's hard sometimes for us to appreciate what it must have been like to see these things for the first time. They were monochromatic, and therefore photographers experimented early on with hand-coloring the cheeks, hand-coloring the jewelry, and sometimes hand-coloring the entire image. They're highly reflective. They appear like a mirror when you hold them in your hand, and that's how you distinguish them actually from the amber type, which is a photograph on glass, which is not as reflective, and the reflective nature of the daguerreotype has to do with the fact that it's on a silver-plated copper support. Unfortunately, these materials are prone to corrosion and deterioration, particularly at the outer edges, so when you look at this portrait from the Metropolitan Museum, you can see that the edges are somewhat tarnished and corroded, and this is very common with cased daguerreotypes really around the world. As the air and moisture intrudes at the outer edges, you begin to form these corrosion patterns that you see in this portrait. And of course, if the cover glass, which is true in this case, is broken or cracked, you'll begin to see corrosion appearing across the breakage, where you get the intrusion of air and moisture. So it is important to handle these materials properly to protect them, to protect the surfaces from handling because they are so fragile, and one of the other challenges that we face with daguerreotypes is that the cover glass, which you see here, which is broken in this case, sometimes begins to deteriorate or decompose, and that's what we refer to as glass decomposition or weeping glass, and you see a good example of that here in this anonymous portrait from the George Eastman House, where the glass itself has begun to deteriorate. It almost looks like it has these tiny droplets, and as the glass begins to deteriorate, these deterioration products can drop down on the silver image, causing deterioration to the photograph itself. Glass decomposition can be controlled to some extent through proper storage, environmental conditions. In some situations, it may be important for you to consult with a photographic conservator to see whether these glasses should in fact be replaced with more modern glasses. But that needs to be done very carefully because some of the seals are original, and so one has to sort of weigh the advantages and disadvantages from intervening into this case and to try to protect the daguerreotype from damage to the issues of authenticity. But in general, you can see that this daguerreotype is in relatively good condition and that the cover glass has deteriorated quite significantly. These composite problems are just typical of the kinds of issues that we face with photographic materials, and as I mentioned, many of the direct positive materials are in these decorative cases, the construction of which you see here. So typically you have your object in, let me get my pointer, sorry, bear with me. Typically you have your object in this case, the daguerreotype, which is then protected with a brass mat, which you see here, a cover glass on top to protect that surface. And then after 1845 or so, you begin to see, perhaps a little bit later actually, maybe 1850, you begin to see the presence of this preserver, which is a metal foil, a thin metal foil that wraps around the edges of this sandwich, which then is, which you can see the foil here, the metal preserver here, which then is inserted into the case, the decorative case. So these case elements all have their own issues associated with preservation and conservation that you need to be aware of as well, and this is really what makes the preservation of photographic materials so exciting because you're dealing with such a range of objects. So you have the daguerreotype, which is on silver-plated copper, and you also have the amber type, which you may have in your collections as well, from introduced in 1851, 1852 popular into the 1860s as well, sometimes into the 1870s. In this case, this is an image on glass, a wet-plate-colonial negative really, that as you can see here, that appears positive when it's backed with black, a black lacquer, a black material of some kind that creates a positive image. And these two were encased in cases and again can be distinguished from the daguerreotype because they aren't as reflective. They have more of a three-dimensional look because you're looking through the glass, sometimes to see the image beneath. They tend to be in relatively good condition. They are often varnished to protect the silver image from oxidation and corrosion, which is more common with the daguerreotype. They may be extensively hand-colored as you see here. And this image again is referred to as the amber type or the collodion positive on glass. Collodion referring to the binder layer, the image binder that holds the silver image and suspension. And so in this slide you can see, you may even see amber types up into the 1880s, but they're really more common in the 1860s and the early 1870s. They are on glass. They're dimensionally stable. The silver image is in this collodion binder. Collodion is a form of siloes nitrate. It's one of the binders that you find used in the 19th century in photography. They are typically varnished and for that reason they may be somewhat yellowed. And again, to create a black, a positive image, because these really are negatives on glass, they were often coated on the back with a black asphaltum layer applied to the reverse of the glass. And this asphaltum layer may also crack and craze over time. The tin type is the third direct positive process that you may encounter in your collection and the one that's perhaps the most common introduced in 1856. But let me say common in the United States, not so common really around the world. This process was really quite popular in the United States, whereas the amortite process was more popular worldwide, particularly in places like New Zealand and Australia. The tin type dominates the 19th century. In this case, it's not on tin at all, but on Japan iron. Japaning refers to the presence of a black lacquer. So this is an iron support that's lacquered with a black pigment of some kind. It's also a silver image in a collodion binder and typically varnished. And as is true with other photographs that I've shown you, these materials may be hand-colored a bit in the cheeks. So done in indoor studios, I love tin types. I'm sure many of you do as well. It's a great snapshot of photography in the 19th century. And they are really, really wonderful images of children, particularly when you study these materials. They tend to be in relatively good condition. This tin type looks very brown, but it's probably because the lacquer was more of a brown lacquer than a black lacquer. I don't think it's necessarily faded. They tend not to fade because they are varnished. And that varnish layer protects the silver image from oxidative attack. But what has happened to this tin type, which is much more common, is that the iron support has begun to deteriorate and rust as you see here. And so when this tin type was flexed or bent in some way, it broke the collodion binder, causing the iron to be exposed to high humidity conditions where it's begun to rust. And this is really one of our greatest challenges with the tin type process. This tin type is another terrific one just to show you one in good condition. Again, a varnished image, a silver image in a collodion binder collodion being a form of salis nitrate on an iron support. You will find all kinds of workshops that you can take that sort of teach you how to make tin types and amber types, particularly at the George Eastman House and other sites as well. There are websites that you can go on to see how these things are done. And it's really fun to take these courses where you can because you get a much better appreciation for the challenges associated with 19th century photography. So I urge you to check out this slideshow and many others that you will find that illustrate how these materials were made. I'm going to try and remember to move this pointer around. I'm sorry. I'll get better at this. I promise by Thursday. But here you see the photographer pouring the collodion. Again, collodion is a viscous material, salis nitrate is being poured on this iron support and then it's going to be rocked back and forth so it covers the support evenly. The second image is actually dipping this plate into a bath of silver nitrate where you're forming light sensitive silver iodide in the collodion binder. This tin type then will be placed in a camera exposed to light. So take a look at this website and many others to sort of better understand how these processes were done. And there are many photographers who are still working in this process. This is a wonderful photograph by John Cox on our faculty here at the University of Delaware who takes students to Tanzania, most recently to Cambodia and Vietnam for photography. And in many cases they're working with historic processes such as a tin type, which you see here. So that just gives you a bit of an introduction. I hope to some of these early direct positives, the daguerreotype, the amber type and the tin type, I will revisit them again as we move through. And I certainly am happy to answer questions about them. Let me go through a few more of the slides before we stop for questions and just introduce a whole other category, which of course is print materials. And these materials range quite considerably from the salted paper print, which you see here in early photographic process comprised of a silver image embedded in a paper support. Introduced and popular about the same time as the daguerreotype, this particular really beautiful salted paper print is in excellent condition. Or the albumen photograph, which began to replace the salted paper print in the 1850s. I'll be talking much more about albumen photography on Thursday, but this is a wonderful image also from the Metropolitan of a hand colored albumen print. In this case from 1875, the albumen process really dominates the 19th century around the world. The Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, New York is a wonderful resource for a variety of information on photographic preservation. I'll be showing you information from the Image Permanence Institute throughout these webinars. They have acquired a collection of hand colored postcards, one of which you see here. So this is a much more recent, in fact, you can see it's 1930 image, which is a photographic image, a black and white image that's been toned to produce something that's brown in color, what we call sepia toning, and then extensively hand colored, as you see here. And another example, I just love these, and so I'm showing these as just examples of photographic printing processes. All of these, interestingly enough, are silver based images, but a wide variety of processes in different time periods, and we'll be reviewing this and all the major processes that you see here in the upcoming seminars. I want to focus particularly on the albumen process and gelatin developing outpapers, because these are the ones that most likely dominate your collections, and we only have five seminars, so we had more time. I would go into many more processes, but I'll try and highlight all of these in my lecture on Thursday. It's important when you're thinking about print processes to think about timelines. This will help you as you begin to differentiate one process from another to understand when they were introduced, because in many cases with your own collections, you probably can begin to date them. You understand them, you know, who the sitters are, you know, as they're from, certainly from the 1860s or the 1890s. So this timeline can hopefully help you begin to sort out the various processes. You'll see that in the 19th century, these silver based processes tend to be more brown in color, purplish brown in color, the salted paper print or the albumen print here. And as we move into the 20th century, we begin to see the introduction of black and white developed outpapers that were popular from 1905 to 1960. So suddenly the image color is shifting from something that's browner in color, a printed out image produced by taking light sensitive materials and placing them into the sun to a developed out image or black and white. And then of course, by the 1960s, the replacement of silver images with chromogenic color photographic processes in which the final image material is actually organic dyes that you see here, cyan, magenta, and yellow. So there are many ways to begin to differentiate these processes, and we will be addressing these in certainly the books that I mentioned earlier in the webinar address them as well. The albumen process dominates the 19th century. It's introduced in 1851. It's popular into the 1890s. It's popular around the world. It's on a thin paper support. It's typically mounted because these photographs have a tendency to curl. The final image is silver. This is an albumen print actually in just gorgeous condition. You know, beautiful details and the highlights as you see here. It's known as the albumen process because the binder is actually egg white or albumen. And the images silver, these images do fade. The egg white can crack and craze upon exposure to fluctuating environmental conditions. And we'll talk about this in much more detail on Thursday. As we will also visit the silver gelatin developing out process, which looks very different from the albumen print that you saw earlier. You can see this image is much blacker in color. It's more black and white. It's developed out rather than printed out. The final image is actually metallic silver, which is also true of the albumen print. Let me see if I can go back just out of curiosity. I can. Good. So again, just, you know, look at the difference in the image color there. That's brown or purplish brown in color versus the portrait of this woman, which is much more black and white. In this case, the binder is gelatin. So this is a silver image embedded in a gelatin binder, which is the typical binder that you encounter in the 20th century. And in this case, there's some evidence of image fading and deterioration throughout, and also silver mirroring, which I will also talk about, something that you'll encounter with your photographic prints and glass plate negative from this time period, caused by exposure to poor environmental conditions again. And finally, contemporary color processes, which are very different in cross-section here. You can see you're dealing with a cross-section that's comprised of dyes, cyan, magenta, and yellow. Another train. I'm so sorry about this, but I hope you can hear me. And you can see in this portrait that it's very magenta, and that's because the cyan dye has faded quite significantly, as probably has a yellow dye. In this case, this image is on a resin-coated paper support, a paper that's coated on both sides with polyethylene. The focus here, as I'm sort of going through this relatively quickly, I realize is just to give you a snapshot on what kinds of materials you have in your collections and the wide variety of image materials and bases and time periods that are represented, and hopefully our goal in the days ahead, the month ahead, is to try and strategize about how to preserve these. So chromogenic color certainly dominates the 20th century and is popular until really present time, but of course digital processes dominate collections now. But these are dye-based images in a gelatin binder, and we will be speaking at great length about dye fading and deterioration. And many of you will often ask, well, what about color slides? Color slides, just like color prints, are comprised of organic dyes. In this case, positive images on a film, on a plastic support of some kind, typically cellulose acetate or polyester. There's a wonderful book that has not been printed yet, but it will be out very shortly also produced by the Getty, the Getty Conservation Institute, by Sylvie Penichon, who's at the Amon Carter Museum, and this will really be your best resource or one of your best resources for color photography, 20th century color photographs. It's another wonderful book by Henry Wilhelm as well, which I'll refer to in the next session. But we look forward to Sylvie's book, which should be out shortly. And finally, and then I'll take a break for a question or so, but our time is racing away, I see. But I did want to mention that as we talk about photographic materials, we probably won't be talking a lot about photomechanical processes. So these are photographic processes, such as a color type, which you see here that are produced with photographic negatives, but are actually prints that are made with printing ink in multiples. And as you look for your collections, you're likely to have many photomechanical print processes as well. And sometimes they can be quite difficult to distinguish from photographic, which are continuous tone images. But as you look carefully at these photomechanical processes and under magnification, 30x magnification ideally, which you can achieve with special loops, you will begin to see, as you see here with this color type, that these images are not continuous tone, that they're broken up in some way, and they actually are printed. And so this is a hand-colored color type. And here I want to be sure to immediately direct you to this wonderful resource, the Graphics Atlas, on the Image Permanence Institute website. This resource includes information on photomechanical and photographic processes, where you can research these materials and better understand how they were made and what they look like, how they deteriorate. And you can begin to explore the site and compare one process to another. So here's just one example of comparing a cyanotype, a process in which the final image material is blue, comprised of the pigment Prussian blue, with the albumin process, which is, of course, a material which we just spoke about, where the final image material is metallic silver in an albumin binder layer. These obviously do not require a lot of intensive study to distinguish a cyanotype from an albumin print, but it just gives you a sense of side-by-side comparison of how this works. You can explore the site. I urge you, if you can, between now and Thursday, take a look at this. Look at albumin prints. Look at photomechanical processes. It allows you to zoom in and look at these materials under high magnification. It allows you to look at them at different lights, different lighting conditions, breaking light, specular light. And I think it will find it to be very, very useful as you begin to try and differentiate photomechanical from photographic, albumin from salted paper, silver gelatin from albumin, et cetera. So it's another great resource that we're very fortunate to have available to us online. And it is part of the Image Permnus Institute website. The Image Permnus Institute has many other resources as well that we'll address when we talk more about environmental control and digital processes, but do try and find time to visit the Graphics Atlas. And another resource is a website through the George Eastman House known as Notes on Photographs. And here you can explore questions that you might have on different processes, how they were made, how they've deteriorated over time. There's a great search engine here. I don't have time through this seminar to sort of highlight various pages, but I'm just urging you to take a look at these on your own. Maybe at this point, it's 2 o'clock. I can't believe it. I hope you guys are all sort of hanging in here with me. But Kristen, are there any questions that you think I might address at this point? I think so. I have time to do so. Yes. Let's do a few. Greta's been doing great job talking with everyone. Thank you, Greta. Yeah, I feel like through Greta, basically everyone's gotten a little bit of information. I did want to ask a question about the stereotypes. Melissa said, what causes the image to flake off of the stereotype? Is it just moisture or corrosion? And Greta replied, it could be a lot of things. And then it's just a phenomenon that it's kind of unusual for Degarotype. Do you have any more to flake? Yeah, I'm seeing that. Let me just tell you all again how grateful I am to Greta and Heather who are doing this and doing such a good job with all your questions. And please don't hesitate to keep asking questions because it gives us a sense of sort of what we need to elaborate on. Greta's absolutely right. It actually is unusual for Degarotypes to flake. So first, what we need to do is ensure that in fact this is a Degarotype. So the Degarotype as an object is highly reflective. It's often referred to as a mirror with the memory. And so you have this highly reflective surface. If you hold it in different angles, you'll see a positive or negative image. You'll often see yourself in a very highly polished plate. Degarotypes that are very badly tarnished and corroded may not reflect as much, but still they have this high reflection. Whereas the ampertite, which is a photograph on glass, and remember that's collodion on glass, that is a process that does tend to flake. Because you've coated this collodion binder, this viscous cellulose nitrate liquid on a glass support and it can start to flake at its outer edges. And likewise, that black lacquer layer, which is often applied to the verso of the glass, often tends to crack and flake as well. So the flaking phenomenon is a bit more common with the ampertite or the tin type than it is with the Degarotype. All that said, however, all bets are off with photographs and you can encounter everything you never expected, certainly. And it is true that the Degarotype plate can exfoliate. And exfoliate refers to its flaking. It's the delamination of these different layers. So the Degarotype is a silver-plated copper support. And at the outer edges, in some cases, although it's relatively rare, that silver layer will begin to exfoliate or lift or flake. So, Melissa, you may be seeing that with your image, but it is also possible that in fact you have a tin type or a amber type. So you want to go back and look at these materials. If it's in a case, sometimes it can be hard to tell. If it's in a case, one way to differentiate tin types on an iron support from the amber type process is with a magnet, a strong magnet. And you will actually feel that magnetic pull of the iron support. So that's another tip that may help you. Does that answer the question? Yeah, I think that is a very helpful answer. Okay. When Nina had a question, she was noting that she had a family group photo from the late 1890s and saw that was mounted by a jewelry store. And she was interested in that. And Greta did reply that small tin types were often made small to go into jewelry. And so that we didn't think that was too unusual to see a jeweler's mark on a photograph. But she wondered if this, well, hers is no longer in its case if it ever had been presented in any kind of a case. So she was wondering about that. Oh, okay. Yeah. Would it make it more available to environmental conditions? Yeah. Tin types are really quite spectacular because they can be in different sizes. They were produced. Some of them are found in decorative cases, which is true with the daguerreotype and the amber type. They tend to be standard sizes. But they also were sometimes inserted into paper mats. They were also placed into photographic albums during the Victorian times. You look at Victorian albums, which may be comprised of albumin photographs, but in the back you often find smaller tin types. But they also can be very, very small, as is true, most likely with this particular tin type. Those were known as gem tin types, and they were made for jewelry. And they were also made for specialized albums that just held these small, you know, maybe two centimeter in diameter tin type portraits in these very small, decorative albums that were made for these tin types. But they were also mounted into jewelry, into pens. They were used for photographic buttons. They were used for campaigns as well during the time period that the tin type was popular. So you can find them in various formats. They need to be protected, particularly when they're so small. They should be housed in some kind of—they're not in the original enclosure for jewelry. They should be protected in some way. If they are, I would leave them as is, because that's all part of their history and part of their preservation. And I would imagine that this particular object is in relatively good condition. Again, I love to talk a bit about the cross-section. I'd love for you to really think back, all of you, on what is the cross-section of these materials. I'm going to talk about that shortly. But just thinking, with a tin type, then it's on an iron support that's coated with a black lacquer of some kind, a collodion binder, and then a varnish. And so certainly if these materials are exposed to poor environmental conditions, these different layers will begin to expand and contract differently. And you can begin to see flaking and deterioration with a tin type. But many of them are in very, very good condition. And thank goodness for that varnish layer that protects the silver image from fading and deterioration. That's great. Thanks. Well, Robin had a question about c-print and c-bachrome. But as Greta mentioned, that's going to come up maybe a little more in the next webinar. So I'll make sure to save this question, and we can revisit it then. Yeah, we certainly can. Let me just say one thing. C-print is a term that's used for chromogenic color photographs. But it can also be used for many other processes. So sometimes in your collection, you'll have photographs that are identified as C, capital C prints. But for the most part, these are colored images. C-bachrome is one type of a color photographic process in which it uses azodis. It's known as the silver dye bleach process. And honestly, I'm not sure how much detail I will go into with all the different color processes. There are many, from chromogenic color to silver dye bleach to dye diffusion transfer to dye imbubition, which is the dye transfer process. But if we can get into that, we certainly will. And you'll get into color slides? I will get a bit into color slides and color preservation more generally, yeah. Okay, great. And I know that Valeria had a question about photograph storage, but you'll be getting into that a little later on, so we'll make sure to hold that question for, I think, Webinar 4. And then I think Greta has done a good job answering Christina's question about the difference between printing out and developing out. Oh, that's a good question. I will talk about that a bit more. I realized actually, you know, this is some of my first experiences with the Webinar. And one of the challenges, of course, as you all can imagine, is I'm speaking in my office, surrounded, I must say, by images of the Beatles, which is nice, but talking to my computer. And so I can't see you. And so it's hard, as soon as I said printed out, I thought, oh, gosh, you know, I really haven't explained that. And if I could see you, I could suddenly see that you all look stricken, thinking, what is she talking about? But printed out simply refers to the fact that these are photographic processes. Print processes primarily, they dominated the 19th century, which are made by taking light-sensitive paper and placing that paper in contact with a negative, a glass plate negative, into a printing frame. And out into the sun, where the image visually prints out. And so we refer to these materials as printed out, that is, they were produced by sun. And in doing so, you're forming a silver image that's rounded in shape. It's known as printed out silver or photolytic silver. Whereas when I mentioned developing out, and at the same moment I realized if I could have seen you all in front of me, I would have realized that, you know, I need to step back and explain that. But developing out refers to the technique of taking light-sensitive paper. And now you're working in a dark room where the lights are dim. You might be working with a red light or no light. But you take this light-sensitive paper, you place it in an enlarger, and you enlarge a negative image onto that paper and then go from the enlarger to a chemical developer. You're working entirely in a dark room. You're not using the energy of light. You're not contact printing, but you're rather enlarging. And that's what we call developing out. That's black-and-white photography. I'll talk more about that on Thursday. But that distinguishing printed out from developing out is an important concept that you want to begin to understand because it will help you to differentiate photographic processes such as the albumen print from the black-and-white Silver Gelatin photograph. So let me, Kristen, how about if I – actually, you know, we're doing remarkably well. But let me go through a few more images and then pick up some questions toward the end. And I promise you all will end at 2.30 if you were my graduate students. I keep you here for many more hours, but I know you all have to run off and take care of so many other things. So let me keep moving forward if that's okay. But once again, I went back a bit to this Graphics Atlas page just to say, although I don't – this is not necessarily part of the homework, it would be very useful for you to try and check this out before we meet again on Thursday. Okay. Notes on photographs I mentioned. Back again to this concept of photographic collections being varied. We've talked about direct positive images. We've talked about print materials of which there are all kinds, and these are typically on photographic papers of some kind. It's nice with photography that the paper support tends to be of good quality. Thank goodness for that. And so good quality papers. In the 1960s, we began to see the introduction of resin-coated papers, paper that's coated with polyethylene on both sides. But print materials, for the most part, are on a paper support or something like that. A silver image, they may in fact be a dye-based image. They may be platinum. They may be a pigment. But we call these photographic prints. And then, of course, there's a whole other category of materials that are negatives, which we'll talk about in webinar three. You can see this glass plate negative here being removed correctly, actually, from a paper envelope. And these negatives may be on glass or they may be on film. I showed you this image earlier, the salis nitrate film negative here, which the film-based salis nitrate film is beginning to deteriorate in catastrophic ways. And in doing so is adversely affecting the silver image, which has begun to yellow and deteriorate as well. And these negative materials may be on salis acetate. They may be on salis nitrate or on polyester film. And it's important to understand these different materials so you can strategize carefully on their preservation. My seminar number four, we'll talk about preservation planning and sort of how to take all this information and begin to develop a stepwise approach to dealing with negatives, prints, and daguerreotypes, amber types, tin types, et cetera. So I'll try and pull that all together for you in seminar number four. But now I just want to be sure that you're just well aware of the fact that we've got this range of materials. One thing that's interesting, however, is that many of the negative materials, let me grab that pointer that you see in this image here, although their bases may vary from acetate to polyester to salis nitrate, the image material is very similar. And that is that these are comprised of silver images in a gelatin binder layer. There is no albumin, there is no collodion. And the only exception is probably this one, which is a color image. So in this case, the final image material is actually organic dyes. So these cross sections vary from process to process, but they're also similarities in terms of silver metal or gelatin binder layers. And we'll talk about that. This is a wonderful photograph provided by a colleague of mine in Lisbon, Portugal, Louis Pavo, who has a business there, and they're involved in the preservation of photographic collections throughout Portugal and really around the world. And here you can see them treating a collection of salis acetate negatives. And what's interesting about this image is that they are actually removing the deteriorated acetate base from the gelatin pellicle. And I show you this just so you can begin to really appreciate the layered structure of these photographic materials. As you deal with your collections, not only do you have different kinds of categories, but different kinds of formats. Many photographic prints were mounted. Many mounted photographic prints were placed into photographic albums, as you see here. And so, oh, I want to move that pointer. And so we will spend some time talking about the preservation of photographic albums. A more contemporary one. This photographic album, you would know that necessarily, but this is a more brown in color, probably more likely turn of the century. You can see these images are mounted onto these decorative pages. It's important with albums of all kinds, whether they're Victorian, which is true of the earlier image which I showed you. This is a Victorian album, or a slightly more modern, as you see here, that these albums be preserved as a unit. These albums tell a story, and we want to try to avoid disassembling them, but trying to find ways to preserve them as a photographic album with a binding intact. And they may be comprised of a wide variety of print processes. I suspect these are silver gelatin printing out photographs. And I'm saying print it out because they really aren't black and white in color. You can even see this from the image. They're more brown in color. But you may have albums, I'm certain you do, in your collections that are black and white, or color, or whatever that might be. And also framed materials, we'll talk a bit about that. Here's another image that was provided from North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences. Thank you for doing that. Honestly, if you guys want to keep sending some images, I will try and add them in. I think it's nice to do that. But so what's happening with this photograph? This is classic photograph degradation, photographic materials that have been housed in varying different kinds of environments, perhaps exposed to water of some kind, but they're framed directly against the glass. And they can then adhere to the glazing. It's something that you may have encountered in your collections or in your own family materials as well. It's important with these photographic materials to map them, frame them properly, and to protect them from environmental conditions, which can cause the problems like you see here. So we'll talk a bit over the course of this discussion about framed materials as well. The bottom line for this seminar really is just to understand this cross-section that we're dealing with a wide variety of photographic materials from 1839 to the present day, that you have many different supports that may include for photographic print materials, the paper support, as you see here. But with other materials, it can be glass or metal, leather, textiles. Photographs are produced on all different kinds of supports, plastic film. Many photographs have a transparent binder layer, which holds the final image material and suspension. So that's what you see here. The binders vary from albumin, the white of henzix, to collodion, a form of salis nitrate, to gelatin, a commercially prepared protein. And the final images also vary significantly. So when we begin to really think about these materials, I want you to always be thinking about these different supports and how they deteriorate over time. We've talked about many of them, the various binders, albumin, collodion, and gelatin. Again, albumin and collodion sort of dominating the 19th century. Gelatin introduced as a binder in the late 1870s, but really dominating in the 20th century. And then a final image material, which may be silver organic dyes, pigments, platinum, gold, iron salts. A whole variety of materials. This webinar, this series of webinars, will focus primarily on silver images and organic dyes because they really dominate the collections. I love the quiz at the beginning. It was really great for me. It gave me a snapshot of where you all are coming from. Kristen will continue to include those as we begin to drill down and better understand your collections. But I have to imagine just based on my own experience of teaching around the world that most of you have silver-based images, organic dyes, images as well. But you may have photographs that are comprised of pigments such as the gum biker mate photograph or the carbon print or platinum prints that produced the turn of the 19th century, well until about 1925. It's rare to find photographs that are comprised of gold, but that is possible, and iron salts, the cyanotype, which many of you may in fact have. If not in your photographic collection, certainly in your architectural drawing collection. So we will talk more about basic preservation advice, the need to house collections and good quality enclosures and boxes for protection. As you see here, we'll talk more about controlling the environment and temperature in the use of cold storage for those materials that are particularly vulnerable such as acetate or salis nitrate film or colored materials. This is Greta again who has been online answering your questions. You can see her here at the Library of Congress where she's finishing up her third year study in our graduate program. Or the cold storage facility at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon where I've had the great privilege to work for many years in a project that I hope to talk to you about in the final webinar, our work in the preservation of photographic collections throughout the Middle East. It's important to monitor light levels and we'll talk a bit about exhibition in webinar number four. This is Richard Stenman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but now at the Benner Image in New Jersey monitoring photographs on display. Light does cause photographs to deteriorate, as we've mentioned quite a bit about relative humidity and temperature, but not so much about light. Silver images don't necessarily fade from exposure to light, but binder layers can yellow dye images certainly can fade and paper supports can be embrittled and deteriorate. Another website that's very important I think for all of you is the American Institute for Conservation website. And here I urge you to refer to the AIC, our professional organization in the United States for advice on finding a conservator, because it will be important as much as we'll try to cover some of your concerns and challenges, it will be most useful for you to connect with a photographic conservator where you can and the AIC will help you find photographic conservators in your region through their referral service. There's lots of other great information on the AIC website as well, brochures on general information on caring for photographs. You in fact may wish to join the AIC to learn more about the field of conservation, and I urge you to do so. Another basic area that we'll be talking more about is an area that's near and dear, I think to all of us unfortunately, and that is a need to protect these materials from natural and man-made emergencies and disasters. This is a photograph from Hurricane Sandy and Superstorm Sandy privately owned and you can see that it's very badly damaged and it's interesting to note that the poor people who suffered through that Superstorm hurricane many, many months ago are still going back to their homes to try and recover their photographic collections. We'll talk more about what you can do to protect these materials against disasters and certainly the need to handle these materials carefully is important as well. Proper handling to prevent unnecessary damage is really key to the preservation of these collections. Oh, I'm sorry, that didn't bounce up, and here you see a great example of a very, very early photograph. In fact, this is a photogenic drawing, one of the earliest photographic processes, a silver image and a paper support from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is being handled as it should be, of course, with gloves. And so you want to be sure that in your institution as we focus on these bigger issues of preservation that you're thinking about, what are the handling practices and policies, emergency planning policies, exhibition policies that you have in place in your institution. And finally, just one of my favorite images really, this is my grandmother, Mina Hess, who sadly passed away a number of years ago, but at the age of 106. And grandma, you know, what did she love to do? She loved to look at her photographic materials and to talk about who these people are. And this gets back, sort of harkens back to my earlier slides about why what we do is so important, so rewarding and such a wonderful field to be engaged in, and that is the connection of these materials to humanity. And Don't Leave Grandma on the Attic is simply a reminder that we need to protect these materials from fluctuating environmental conditions that you find in basements and attics, high temperature, high relative humidity, and certainly light pollutants for handling emergencies as well. So, Kristen, I'm going to turn this over to you just to see in the time remaining what questions we might have, there is homework associated with this seminar as I believe there will be with all of them. But let me share that at the very end and explain that a bit. But Kristen, are there any questions that you think I could address at this point? Yeah, actually we have a number of great questions. So I just want to head and pull up your homework slide, which is just to ask you to identify three preservation challenges associated with your photograph collection and what some strategies for improvement might be. And Thursday's homework, just to give you a preview, Debbie and I were discussing having you actually do some identification with the graphic atlas. So that will give you a chance to investigate that site a little bit more. But if you don't mind, Debbie, while we're answering questions, I wanted to just pull up the link to the homework and you'll also find out on the course web page. And then for those of you who have been watching with colleagues today, we want to give you credit for participating. So tell us who you're watching with. If you logged in just by yourself, don't worry, we know who you are. We saw you in our attendance box, which you can't see, but we can see. We had 316 of you today. But if you're watching with others, just quickly type in the names. So I think you handled some questions in your last bit about handling with cotton gloves. And you mentioned care of handling during a disaster, and that had come up in the chat maybe using vinyl latex gloves in that case. Do you want to briefly address that now and we can do more of that a little later on? Kristen, are you asking me again what you want me to address? Okay, sure. So you had mentioned cotton gloves are appropriate for cotton versus latex. Okay, I understand. Especially in a disaster situation, would you go away from cotton in that case? Okay, let me answer that. I just have to tell you I was becoming too ambitious and I started trying to chat with you guys too as Kristen was speaking. Obviously I can't multitask in all these different ways. In a disaster, gosh, things are so different in a disaster situation. Honestly, you do your best to respond in a logical way. And in a disaster situation, the gloves are important not really only to protect the photographs, but more importantly to protect you and those who are involved in the recovery of these materials because you don't know what they've been exposed to. So actually I would urge everyone to be wearing gloves, latex gloves, something that's protective. Here you're not so worried about the images honestly. I mean you're doing what you can to preserve them, but you've got to be cognizant and aware of health and safety issues as well. For the most part, we recommend cotton gloves for handling photographs in reading rooms and study collections for users and for the staff as well. But even in that case, there are situations where gloves may not be the best option. For example, handling glass plate negatives. Some people feel very uncomfortable handling these materials with gloves because you don't get a sense of the weight and the fragility of these materials. You can handle glass plate negatives with your hands. Make sure they're washed and just don't touch the surfaces. Handle the edges only. So some of this depends on individuals, the kinds of processes, the situations you find yourself in. Before emergencies and disasters, absolutely wear gloves, but this is to protect you and also perhaps in some ways to protect the photographs. When you find yourself in these situations, you've really got to begin to just triage and think about what can be done, what needs to be done now, which parts of the collections are most important, what can be recovered, where can you go for help. Ideally, you have a disaster plan in place, and so this is somewhat established and you get a better sense of what to do. You don't want to be sort of planning at the time of a disaster. I'm not going to be talking about disaster planning, but there was, Kristen, I'm correct, I believe, a whole series of webinars on disaster planning and emergency response and recovery, led by a variety of well-known individuals in this field, and you can go back and replay that. I just do so because as we spend all this time talking about the preservation of photographic materials, I want to be certain that your collections are well protected from potential emergencies and disasters, whether they're localized or more broad-based. Great. And I wanted just to, we just have just up two minutes literally left, and I wanted to let everybody know I've got all your questions, and I do think all of them will be addressed in future webinars, and we will make sure that Greta's been great at getting at most of them, but we'll make sure Debbie knows about them and can definitely work them into her future lectures. I guess there was a great question I had that when you have historic negatives, should they be reprinted today using different methods? Can you do that, or any other additional information on that? Yeah, that's a good question, and although I won't be talking over the course of this seminar about how to do that, I would say absolutely yes, they can and often they should be reprinted or at least digitized so that these images can be available for scholarship, for research, for youth. Negatives are hard to examine. They are problematic in terms of preservation, and so many institutions are looking at processes for digitizing these collections, and from the digital negative you can of course make a digital print. In terms of actually using the negatives for printing, physically printing, using contact printing processes, I would advise against that because of the fragility of the negatives you may in fact cause damage in doing so, but you can make a facsimile negative or a copy negative, and from that you can do printing. Years and years ago this was a technique for duplicating negative collections to reprint them carefully, and it's still something that's done, but it's not necessarily something I would recommend. More important to try and digitize and preserve these collections, make them available online for scholarship and research, for visibility and prominence, but please also be certain to preserve the original. The digital copy is not necessarily the preservation copy, but it's something that you're producing for access. I think it's very helpful, and we had a good chat going on about scanning and Greta noting that it's better to scan the image face up, which is challenging for some folks, but we're not going to get into a lot of information on digitizing in this course, but we will at least try to find some good resources that we can link to on the course web page to give you a start in thinking about it. And let me also say to all of you, I mean it's great to have such a large group, as heritage preservation sort of thinks about the needs for the future and future webinars, these kinds of questions help if I'm not going to cover it, but it's clearly an issue that's present on your minds, and if we're not going to cover it in the digitization workshop, which we may, but if not, we can begin to develop sessions that address some of these topics very specifically. So it's good for us to know, you know, sort of what are the needs out there. I just want to be certain that as you digitize these collections that you're preserving the originals, and please don't make that tragic mistake of assuming that once digitized you no longer need to focus on the original material. Great. Thank you for saying that. And there's a lot of interest in talking about albums. So again, we do need to wrap up for today, but I will make sure all of your questions are noted. We won't be replying to them in writing, but I'm certain that Debbie can get to them in her future. Kristin, can they? I'm not even sure if this is possible, but can they still send images? Or is it too late to do that? I'm just thinking if they have questions on albums that I want to send me some, or not send some, I don't know where they would send them. I could add them into a PowerPoint. Yeah. I think Greta had shared her Gmail account, and I'll put in the chat our Gmail account, just because Gmail can handle some larger attachments than our info at heritagepreservation.org. So I'll put that in the chat in just a few minutes, or Jenny can. And yeah, that would be fine. We're happy to channel that to you. And then I could sort of fund when I can put in images and refer to some of you who have contributed them. And then we can be even more specific in our recommendations. We have a better sense of exactly the kinds of challenges you're facing. Oh, they're still there. Yeah, I just want to note just Margaret from Raleigh, North Carolina had sent in some images. And I think, I don't know exactly how you describe them, but she wants you to know that they were images on glass, not prints framed against glass. Oh, did I show that one? Is that one of the images that I showed that I thought was framed against glass? Is that right? Yeah, you did show it. I mean, we'll bring it back in a future webinar so we can look at it again. Yeah. Okay, well that's interesting. So they're direct positives on glass. See, this is the problem sometimes of looking at these images. And it is just an indication of there's a huge variety out there. And from Margaret, that complicates the preservation just a bit more, but it's not impossible. And we will bring that back and address that at some point, I promise. Oh, and light shines through them. That's really fantastic. That's actually relatively unusual. You see that because these images are more modern. You see that at the Victorian time when they began to experiment with transparency of glass and holding, you know, putting photographs in the windows. So I didn't realize that. So I'm glad to learn that. And that makes sense because they're at the Museum of Natural Sciences where you begin in these kinds of collections to see these really clever shifts and changes in the photographic process. So we'll be sure to get that right. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Debbie. And everyone, look for an email coming from infoatheritagepreservation.org with the transcript and the homework assignment and the link to today's handouts. And we look forward to seeing you at 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. And you guys also let us know how we're doing. You know, it's a sort of the right pace. Again, I'm so used to having an audience in front of me. And so any tips, thoughts you have, it's absolutely welcome because I'm trying to treat this as a class. And so let us know. And thank you so much for signing on and really from all over the world. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be gathered together? But that's not possible. So I look forward to...